January 22, 2024
Hui turn-out rebuke to rogue parliament
Urban Māori leader and Māori Party president John Tamihere says Saturday’s hui a motu was a chance to start repairing the divisions of a generation of treaty settlements.
More than 10,000 people gathered at Turangawaewae Marae in Ngaruawāhia to discuss the Treaty of Waitangi, national identity and the future for Māori.
Mr Tamihere says the hui was a response to questions over whether the new coalition Government had the legitimacy to drive its agenda regarding Māori, including Act’s David Seymour’s proposed rewrite of treaty principles.
He says the treaty settlement processs over the past 35 years divided iwi, and Māori are now looking for kotahitanga and equality within wider society.
“The common values we share far out-populate any differences we have which were microscoped over the fight over treaty settlements where the crown got us fighting one another so we are now starting to concentrate on the perpetrator of all the problems and that is a parliament in the hands of a few people that do not have a thumping mandate to overturn where we are heading as a people,” Mr Tamihere says
He says the Kiingitanga is the only group in Māoridom able to host of hui of that scale, but its strength was inif promotion of confederation rather than requiring iwi to join up fully.